They weren’t here for sightseeing.
She could feel it in Gabriel’s stillness, in the way Barrington checked the angle of the sun. Even her aunt’s carried purpose, sharp, deflecting, designed to fill silence before questions could.
As they moved down the track, Lady Margaret called out to a manby the marker stone. He was broad-shouldered, wore a cap pulled low, and leaned on a walking stick. “Tell me, is that where the monks used to stand? Or is it just a dramatic fencepost?”
The man chuckled and launched into a story about smugglers and false blessings. Leticia smiled faintly but kept walking, her eyes forward.
Gabriel and Barrington broke off, heading toward the shed. The wind pressed against them, lifting strands of Leticia’s hair beneath her hat. She kept to the narrow path, the stones shifting slightly beneath her boots.
A raven called once from the rocks below, a sound so clean and sudden it emptied the air, followed by silence.
Leticia paused near the remains of the cloister wall. Half-covered in moss, a flat stone jutted out like an old book left open. She might’ve passed it, except the sunlight hit it at just the right angle.
She stepped closer.
A carving. Rough but deliberate.
A diamond, uneven, and inside it, a single mark: a bird with outstretched wings.
Not a rose. Not a harp.
A raven.
Her breath caught. The chill that slid down her arm—recognition rather than surprise. She didn’t call out to Gabriel. Not yet.
Instead, she let her gaze shift toward the shed.
The door hung slightly ajar. Gabriel stood just inside. Barrington knelt at the threshold, examining something on the ground.
Leticia drew a slow breath, turned her back to the stone, and brushed her gloves together as though she’d only brushed away dust.
She walked down the incline toward the others, wind tugging at her skirts like a warning she pretended not to hear.
No one stopped her.
The shed wasn’t locked. It didn’t need to be. The sea had alreadyclaimed its toll: rusted hinges, half-sunken roof, salt-swollen boards that sighed with every gust.
Gabriel pushed the door open with his gloved hand and let it swing wide.
Inside, the shadows held still for a moment. Then, the scent reached him, damp rope, cold ash, and something fainter, oil, maybe, or wax.
Barrington followed, ducking slightly beneath the warped lintel.
Gabriel didn’t speak. His eyes moved through the gloom, cataloguing absence, crates, coils of rope, old nets, ordinary until proven otherwise.
But the floor told a different story.
He crouched, brushing his fingers lightly over the dirt. Near the door, dust lay thick and undisturbed. Six feet in, the pattern broke, one sharp scuff, a heel turned too quickly. Someone had turned suddenly, unplanned.
The mark ended near a dark stain on the wall. Soot. A lantern had burned here. Recently.
Barrington crouched beside him. “He waited.”
Gabriel nodded. “Or met someone. But not for long.”
Barrington gestured toward the entrance. “And if someone was watching from the path?”
“They’d see a ruin.” Gabriel rose, brushing off his hands. “But they’d hear voices. Footsteps. If the tide was low, maybe nothing at all.”
